Miracle Creek(99)

“No, no, no. Whose cigarette it was, whose note—these are fun little side mysteries. Your client wanted to get rid of her son, and she was alone with the weapons in hand at the time the fire was set, and nothing that’s been said here changes any of that.”

Shannon said, “Except that Mary Yoo is now—”

“Mary Yoo is a kid who almost died in the explosion.” Abe pounded his fist on the table, sending Shannon’s pen rolling. “She had no motive whatsoev—”

“No motive? Hello? Have you heard anything they’ve said? A teenager, having an affair with a married man. Gets jilted, confronted by the wife. Totally humiliated, furious, wants to just kill the guy who, oh, by the way, happens to be inside the thing she sets an explosion to. Are you kidding me? It’s classic murder-mystery stuff, not to mention the nice little side benefit of 1.3 million dollars from the insurance she herself called to verify.”

“We didn’t have an affair,” Matt managed to say, though not loudly, and Shannon whipped her head his way. “What?”

He started to repeat himself, but Janine cut in, said something, but quietly, looking down, almost murmuring, something about the call.

Abe seemed to have heard. He stared at her, said, “What did you say?” Shock flowed through his words, his face.

Janine closed her eyes, let out a deep breath, and opened them again. She looked at Abe. “I made the call. It wasn’t Mary. You were right; Matt and I switched phones that day.”

Abe’s mouth opened, in slow motion, then froze, no words coming out.

Janine turned to Matt. “I invested a hundred thousand dollars in Pak’s business.”

Invested $100,000? Janine calling about arson? These were so far afield from anything he’d expected that his brain couldn’t make sense of them, couldn’t process how they fitted into any of this. Matt stared at his wife’s lips through which those words had come, the dilated black pupils covering almost the entirety of her irises, the earlobes that dangled bright red from her cheeks, all the elements of her face tilting in different directions like one of those Cubist portraits.

Janine continued. “I thought it was a good investment. He had patients lined up, and they’d all signed contracts and paid deposits, and—”

Matt blinked. “You took our money? Is that what you’re saying? Without telling me?”

“We’d been fighting a lot and I didn’t want another fight. You were so against HBOT, you were irrational about it. I thought you’d say no, but it seemed like such a no-brainer. Pak was going to pay us back first, so we’d have all our money back in four months, before you even missed it, and then we’d get a share of the profits going forward. We had all that money just sitting in our accounts, and it wasn’t like we needed it.”

Shannon cleared her throat. “Look, I can give you the name of a good marriage counselor to work this out, but let’s get back to the arson call. What does all this have to do with that call?” she said, and Matt felt another wave of gratitude to her. For forcing his attention away from the fact that his wife had lied yet again, all because she didn’t want the bother of a potential fight. Was that better or worse than why he’d lied—because he didn’t want to stop meeting a girl?

Janine said, “A few weeks after the dives started, Pak said he found a pile of cigarette butts and matches in the woods. He figured it was just teenagers, but he was worried about them smoking near the barn, and he wanted my advice about whether to put up warnings about oxygen and smoking being forbidden. We discussed it and decided against it, but it made me nervous about our money. In the beginning, Pak didn’t want to get insurance, and I had to tell him I wouldn’t invest unless he did. And it occurred to me—what if he got some bare-bones policy to appease me, and it didn’t cover random kids setting fire to the barn for the hell of it? So I called, and the guy assured me arson coverage is included in all their policies, and that was that.”

No one spoke for a minute, and Matt felt the fog around his brain dissipate, the world righting itself, just a little. Yes, she’d lied. But so had he. And somehow, finding out about Janine’s wrongdoing came as a relief; it eased his guilt about his own sins, the two deceptions canceling each other out.

Abe said, “So that means—”

Just then, someone knocked and opened the door. One of Abe’s assistants. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but Detective Pierson’s been trying to reach you. He says someone called claiming to have spotted Elizabeth Ward outside, by herself.”

“What do you mean? She’s here, with my team,” Shannon said.

“No,” the guy said. “Pierson just talked to them, and they said she left. Something about you giving her money?”

“What? Why would I give her money?” Shannon said as she and Abe ran out. Behind them, the door creaked closed before clicking shut.



* * *



JANINE PLACED HER ELBOWS on the table like tripod stands and covered her face with her hands. “Oh my God.”

Matt opened his mouth to say something, but he didn’t know what. He looked down at his hands and realized: he’d been clutching them together, the scars on his palms sliding and pressing against each other. He thought of the fire, Henry’s head, Elizabeth on death row.

“You should know,” Janine said, “Pak already paid back twenty thousand dollars before the explosion, and he promised he’ll pay the eighty thousand back as soon as insurance comes through. And if that doesn’t happen, I’ll pay you back from my retirement fund.”